Monday, December 14, 2015

We celebrated St. Lucia Day today! We listened to some wonderful music that may still be playing in our students' heads.

We learned who St. Lucia was and how she is celebrated every December 13th, the longest night of the year, in Sweden. In the tradition, the eldest daughter plays St. Lucia and wears a crown of candles, along with a white gown with a red sash. She serves breakfast to the parents along with the other siblings, with the girls wearing crowns and the boys dressed as "star boys."

A lot of our star boys are trying to keep their hats on!

We also made lussekatter, or traditional St. Lucia buns. They were definitely a hit!

Mrs. Bollig from Mrs. Wegner's class visited us as St. Lucia
and gave the children pepperkakor, little gingerbread cookies. According to the tradition, if you press a finger in the middle of the cookie and it breaks into three pieces, you can make a wish. If not, then you still get a yummy cookie to eat!

We are looking forward to stuffing our pinata tomorrow in preparation for Las Posadas!

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

We had another wonderful visit from our middle school biobuddies today! We started off by connecting our subject for the day, the five senses, with the animal groups we study throughout the year. We watched some of the video below--check it out if you would like. It has some fascinating facts about animal super senses. We learned that bees, butterflies and the octopus are all touch tasters--they taste with their feet!

After learning about animal senses, it was time to explore our own five senses.

Monday, December 7, 2015

We had a positive start to our skating experience in kindergarten. Thank you to one of our parents for sharing a few pictures!

We greatly appreciate all our parent helpers! Please feel free to come out on the ice for our next skate on January 8th at 9:15--we have grippers for shoes in case you do not want to wear skates. The more hands we have on the ice, the more assurance and confidence some of our new skaters will have!

Candygram!

As part of our Christmas party next week, we will celebrate Los Posadas.Los Posadas is a holiday tradition in Mexico celebrated for nine nights leading up to Christmas. We read several stories to help us understand its traditions a bit better, one of which is breaking open a pinata! We make our own pinata, a fun and sticky process. The students voted today that it should be in the shape of an evergreen tree, so we're all going to get to work on it tomorrow. A note will go home this week asking for donations to help fill up our pinata.

We have A LOT of celebrations in the next few weeks. We will learn about St. Lucia, Christmas, Hanukkah, as well as have our Lower School Holiday Program and Polar Express PJ Day. Please be on the lookout for some notes going home as well as blog updates.
And of course, stay posted for updates with Biobuddies and our Hanukkah party from this week as well!

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

We had lots of fun in the snow this week. Thank you to all our families for having winter gear ready to go!

St. Nicholas

Of course, we are all waiting to see if St. Nicholas comes to Breck and leaves candies in our homemade shoes! During the month of December, we study many holiday traditions across the world, starting with St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas is believed to be the patron saint of children and sailors. According to the story, over a thousand years ago, Nicholas gave up his worldly possessions and gave to those in need. When he saw that a family with three daughters was destitute, he threw gold coins in their window, where they landed in the family's shoes and socks. Nowadays, many people leave out clogs, shoes or stockings in hopes that St. Nicholas will bring good food, candies or coins.

The St. Nicholas Center has some interesting resources for children about St. Nicholas and the varying traditions used around the world on this holiday. The site also features links to images of St. Nicholas statues around the world, something we looked at as a class to think about how he is portrayed and celebrated in different nations.

St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in many countries on December 6th. The students made and decorated paper clogs in hopes that he will stop by Breck sometime soon!

We ventured into "How To" writing this week. We started with the wonderful book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert.

After our read-aloud, we talked about the steps in making a snowman and each created a "How to Build a Snowman" booklet. Today, each child brainstormed what they feel like they are "an expert" in and then began planning their writing.

We had MANY children excited to share their expertise--we used the magnifier so everyone could see. Our sharers today were focused on teaching people to draw lots of different kinds of things.